Urgent action needed to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030: UN Report

Kiran Rapaka

United Nations released a new report named On the Fast-Track to end the AIDS epidemic on 6 May 2016.

The report warns that the AIDS epidemic could be prolonged indefinitely if urgent action is not taken within the five years to come.

Highlights of the report

• It reveals that the extraordinary acceleration of progress made over the past 15 years could be lost.

• UN through report urges all partners to ensure that the global AIDS epidemic is ended as a public health threat by 2030.

• The report outlines that the rapid treatment scale-up has been a major contributing factor to the 42 per cent decline in AIDS-related deaths since the peak in 2004.

• It also notes that this has caused life expectancy in the countries most affected by HIV to rise sharply in recent years.

• It also underlines the critical role civil society has played in securing many of the gains made and the leadership provided by people living with HIV.

• The report also calls the shortfalls in the implementation of the 2011 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS distressing.

• The report draws attention to regions where new HIV infections are continuing to rise, such as in eastern Europe and central Asia.

• The new HIV infections in these regions have increased by 30 per cent between 2000 and 2014.

• It was mostly among people who inject drugs in the Middle East and North Africa as well as in the Asia–Pacific region.

• The report also emphasizes the necessity of repealing punitive laws and repressive policies that criminalize same-sex sexual relations, drug usage as they impede access to services.

• The report gives strong emphasis to the links between the response to HIV and the success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

• Finally, it urges countries to embrace the UNAIDS Fast-Track approach to ending the AIDS epidemic, which will require reaching an ambitious set of goals by 2020.

Targets

• To reach these goals include reaching the 90–90–90 treatment target for 2020.

• It calls for 90 per cent of people living with HIV to know their status, 90 per cent of people who know their HIV-positive status to access treatment, and 90 per cent of people on treatment to have suppressed viral loads.

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